


Onwards to the Edge

by presentpathos



Category: The Best Song Ever - Gabrielle Aplin
Genre: F/F, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/presentpathos/pseuds/presentpathos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She said her name was Georgia Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Onwards to the Edge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evelyn_b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evelyn_b/gifts).



> Original Title: The Erect Butterfly

The Best Song Ever

**Now**

It’s one of those days, you know the ones, so hot and humid all you really want to do is lie under a ceiling fan or, even better, over top of a cold air duct. I’ve been laying in bed for most of the morning alternately cat-napping and thinking about going to the pool. We have a pool but we’d been away for a week visiting my Grandma in Des Moines and there was an…incident with my big brother’s idiot friend so now it had five gallons of chlorine in it and I couldn’t use it for a week.  
I finally drag myself out of bed and I’m just about to get in the shower when my phone buzzes.  


_Are you up yet?_  


Georgia Rose is my best friend. She moved here when we were both starting junior high. My dad had been promoted at work and we had moved across town too so neither GR nor I had any friends at school. We sat together at lunch a lot, but the thing that really cemented her place in my heavenly firmament (besides her being the only person who laughed when I said heavenly firmament) was the first dance of the school year.  


_I’m just about to shower. Want to go to the pool?_   


_And swim in some kid’s pee? Ew. Isn’t yours done yet?_   


_Not until Friday. Andy took car to work. Come get me?_   


So we’re not rich-rich, my family, but we’re definitely richer than most families I know. Despite being a well-off and having a garage big enough for at least four cars, my parents insist my dumb older brother Andy and I share a car.  


Andy has a job downtown at an office where my dad knows some guys. He’s starting college in the fall at Notre Dame. He’s a complete tool but I think I’ll really miss him. I have a job too, kind of. I know a lot about computers and networks and stuff so Mom gets me to fix things at her office all the time (she’s a lawyer) but I don’t really go there unless she needs me.  


_Nah._   


Ugh. Georgia Rose was such a bitch sometimes. I get in the shower and it’s just so nice and cool that I stay there. I wash my hair for the first time in about a week, and then I have to condition it and so I guess I’m in there for a while because the next thing I hear is Georgia’s voice calling my name from downstairs.  


“Bree? Bree?”  


I turn off the shower and get out, pulling my robe back on before I step back into my bedroom.  


“I’m up—” “I’m about to say _up here_ when Georgia’s suddenly in the door way. “Oh, look who decided to show up.”  


Georgia makes her way into my room and grins before flopping down on the bed. She tosses her hair to one side and it’s like, god, I wish I had her hair. You know Taylor Swift? It’s like Taylor Swift’s hair, only not Taylor Swift’s hair now, but Taylor Swift’s hair five years ago. And brown. Brown with these blonde streaks in it. She has great hair, is all. I guess maybe I look at her a little too long, because when I pull my eyes away from her hair Georgia’s looking at me funny, her head cocked to the side. She has this look – and I know this look, because we’ve been best friends for like, five years – it is the look of “Bree’s not going to want to do the thing but I am going to make Bree do the thing. And Bree will later love doing the thing and I will remind her of it over and over again for weeks.”  


“I think we should go to the beach.”  


“You mean Eagle Creek? Everyone will be at Eagle Creek today. And it’s gross. Way grosser than the pool.”  


She smiles and yeah, I’m definitely not going to like what she’s going to suggest.  


“We’re going to go to Indiana Dunes.”  


“George! We’re not going to Indiana Dunes! It’s like, five hours away.”  


“Um, three things: One, yes we are. Two, it’s like, two hours, not five. Three, we are definitely going. I already asked your dad and he thinks it’s a great idea. He thinks you should go hiking.”  


“Ugh. Fine.” I turn around and start taking off my robe to get dressed and I hear a choking sound, followed by a hard crack and then a sort of thud, I guess you’d call it. I spin around and Georgia’s on the floor, using both hands to hold her head and rocking back and forth, clearly trying really, really hard not to swear.  


“Georgia? What the heck?!” I take two steps towards her and she is just so pale and her eyes are wide and watering.  


“Shit, Bree, you don’t have any clothes on!”  


At first I don’t understand, because Georgia has seen me without clothes on a bunch of times. We’ve been in the same Phys. Ed. Class for years. We’ve had approximately one million sleepovers. She’s making this face though, like a dying fish, so I pull a blanket off and wrap it around myself.  


Georgia’ s up by now and already backing out of the room. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so red before.  


“I’ll just, um, I’ll wait downstairs,” she says.  


**Then**   


So at this stupid dance, it was all just the middle school. None of the boys were dancing; they were just holding up the wall, slouching like they carried the weight of a post-Manning Colts season on their own shoulders. Hardly any of the girls were dancing either. Kids are so lame. So Georgia and I just started dancing and didn’t stop. Like, all night we just danced our heads off to whatever came on. All night was more like two hours, but ever since we spilled out of that gym together with everyone laughing and goofing off behind us, we’ve been best friends.  


**Now**   


We’re on the road pretty quickly after that and Georgia drives so, so fast that my palms are getting kind of sweaty. Every so often I wince or gasp and put my hand on her leg and she'll slow down for a quarter mile, but then suddenly we’ll be going nearly eighty again.  


About half of the way there, Georgia attempts to squeeze between a pig truck and the soft shoulder without dropping below seventy. I’m so scared that I just reach out and grab her leg so hard that she winces. I leave my hand there after we’ve passed the car and I’ve started breathing again. I’m rubbing the pads of my fingers against the half-moon dents I’ve left in her thigh muscles.  


“Could you stop?” she chokes out. “I’m trying to drive.”  


“Huh?” I don’t even realize what she’s talking about until she darts her eyes down to her lap. “Oh, sorry.” I pull my hand away like it’s been burned and feel a flush crawling up my cheeks.  


Suddenly the drive started to feel a whole lot longer.

And of course Georgia is right, the little brat. The beach is amazing. There are a lot of people, but there’s also lot of beach. We park the car and just keep walking and walking until there’s hardly anyone except some moms and their kids and this sweet looking old couple sitting underneath the biggest umbrella I’ve ever seen.  


“How do you think they got that giant umbrella all the way down here?” I whisper to Georgia.  


“Hard to say; either that old lady is a lot stronger than she looks or they have a man servant, Jarvis, who despite his stuffy name is actually a former champion weightlifter who was wrongly convicted of doping and got cleared by Mr. Umbrella’s diligent defense before swearing his life to their service.”  


I laugh so loud that everyone looks at me. I try to stop, but that makes it worse and then Georgia starts up and we’re both laughing so hard that she starts to hiccup.  


“Quick,” I gasp out, “cold water. Into the lake!”  


We run as fast as we can into the water, and it’s not freezing or anything but it’s not warm. We race to get deep enough to dive under, pushing and shoving each other as the water gets deeper around our legs.  


I dive first and resurface ten feet ahead of her . She jumps as soon as I come up and, quicker than quick I can feel her shoulders bumping against my legs. I part them a little and she wraps her hands around them, raising me up in the air as she breaks the surface of the water.  


I wobble a little bit, and it feels like we’re about to fall, but Georgia widens her stance a little. I can just barely see the muscles in her legs working hard to keep us up. Her hands grip basically my entire thigh, just above my knees, and I forget sometimes how strong she is from all the ballet, but her hands are soft and firm, and the moment passes. I sit on her shoulders. Two of the kids on the shore are watching us and I can hear them cheering, so I stick my arms triumphantly above my head.  


“Show off.” She’s looking up at me and smiling.  


“Um, excuse you? Only one of us lifted the other in the air on her own shoulders to demonstrate for all to see what a badass she is.”  


**Then**   


About three weeks before the end of junior year, I broke up with boyfriend, Jeremy. Or I guess we decided to break up together. We’d been dating since I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. He was nice and all, but I didn’t want to sleep with him and, well, he wanted to sleep with _me_. So we broke up. My friends in cheerleading didn’t understand why I’d want to lose a prize like Jeremy over something as lame as sex. I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t _just_ not want to have sex with him –the idea fairly repulsed me.  


When I told Georgia she didn’t question my decision at all. She even looked a little relieved. They’d never really got along.  


A couple of weeks later we were having a sleep over, like we always do at the end of school. We watched silly movies in Georgia’s bed, tangled up in each other like we had been a hundred times before. I was blabbering on about something, best friends falling in love I think, and suddenly Georgia got really still. The movie ended a few minutes later and she decided it was time to go to sleep. I curled into her – she was always the big spoon because of the height thing – and quickly fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later to pee and she was on the other side of the room, staring out the window.  


**Now**   


Indiana Dunes is supposed to be open from sunrise to sunset. Or a half hour after or something. It turns out that Georgia knows some people who live right on the edge, so we drive over to their house, park and sneak back to our little stretch of beach. It’s lot cooler now than it was during the day.  


“We should start a little fire,” Georgia jokes.  


“Don’t even joke. Do you know how many state and federal laws we’re already breaking? The fine for unauthorized fires in national parks is really, really high!”  
Georgia laughs and burrows a little deeper into her hoodie.  


“Sit down with me,” I demand as I plop my butt on to the ground.  


Georgia doesn’t immediately comply so I reach up to tug her hand. She resists for a moment before giving up and sitting behind me. She reaches out and runs her fingers through my hair.  


“Jesus, Bree, this is a mess.” Her fingers pull at the tangled mess of a bun my hair has become. “Lean back,” she urges, pulling gently at my hood.  


I lean back against her legs. She pulls the hair elastic out of my hair and starts weaving her fingers through the rat’s nest back there, gentling out the knots and massaging the skin underneath. She knows exactly how much pressure to use and it feels like magic, so I keep leaning further back and she spreads her legs to accommodate me and before I know it I’ve got my head in her lap and she’s looking down at me with a tiny, knowing grin and I’m staring back up at her, wondering what secret we’ve been keeping from each other. 

I’m all too aware that my head is basically between her legs right now. The barely there leg stubble tickles my ears. If I were facing the opposite direction…I shake my head a little to clear my mind and the sudden movement must startle Georgia, because her thighs tighten around me for just a second before jerking away, farther than they were before. I can’t feel them against me anymore. I feel her shift above me and then I see her eyes, sparkling green like the lake just hours before, surrounded by a curtain of brown waves and blonde highlights. She’s leaning over me and I’m leaning back, so far that my spine arches.  


You know those times when something is about to happen and you know what’s about to happen and you know it’s going to change everything you thought you knew; about yourself, about the world, about your best friend? You can see it coming in slow motion and it’s so scary but you want it so, so bad? More than you’ve ever wanted anything?  


Georgia’s head keeps coming towards my face and I’m moving my head up towards her and it’s like time is slowing down and the world gets narrower and narrower until all I can see are her eyes.  


Warm breath tickles my lips. Whether it’s mine or hers I’m not sure.  


She’s hesitant at first, like she’s afraid I’m about to run, but within seconds she’s leaning in to me taking as much as I’m trying to give. Everything around us disappears. It’s like the kind of kiss that makes stars go out, planets quake. I’m instantly swept away, clutching at her for fear I might actually float away.  


“Wow,” she whispers.  


“Yeah.”


End file.
